Title: The Trial of Socrates
Author: I. F. Stone
Published: 1989
In The Trial of Socrates, the prominent dissident journalist I. F. Stone takes a contrarian view of Socrates and shows that he is something other than the unalloyed saint he is often remembered as.
Stone came the classics late in his career, teaching himself to read classical Greek after he had retired from journalism. In the book he exposes the often ignored divide in Ancient Athenian society. It is not uncommon for even some students who have taken a few subjects and read a few books on the topic, let alone the general public, to lump all the key developments of Athens together; democracy, drama, Socrates, Plato etc. But the most famous names from Athens were anything but democrats and their beliefs and works stand in stark contrast to the daily practices of life in Athens.
This is not a revelation to serious students of the period, but in Stone’s work you can detect perhaps the surprise with which revelation occurred to him the deeper he dug. Socrates is often held up as a secular Saint, or even a pre-Christ figure, noted for his humility, “All I know is that I know nothing” and most of all his calm acceptance of his death sentence.
Stone discovers for himself, and almost in a state of outrage, he vitriolically demonstrates to the reader, that Socrates had a history of supporting undemocratic leaders and regimes, and concludes that his death, at quite an advanced age where he was perhaps not sacrificing too many more years, was done to shame the democracy of Athens.
The author does note that the democracy of Athens at the time was far from perfect, and doesn’t excuse the stain on the city’s reputation brought about by executing a dissenter in this way. But the Athens of 399 BC was recovering from its loss in the 30-year Peloponnesian War, a period marked with intermittent dictatorships and the usual proscriptions, informers and executions that accompany such periods in history.
Stone’s impression of Socrates is not a surprise then to students of the era. There are no surviving works, or no know documented writings at all of Socrates. What we know about about him comes largely from his follower Plato, who describes key events and dialogues across a number of his works, some similar but lesser works from another follower Xenophon, and then for an alternate view he is portrayed as a figure of fun in Aristophanes comedy, The Clouds.
So much of what we think of Socrates is filtered through Plato, and there is little love for the concept of democracy is works like Plato’s Republic. For much of subsequent Western history the unfetttered democracy of Athens was not seen as a desirable political system. Even the founding fathers of America looked to the republic of Rome more than the democracy of Athens and were wary of the power of the mob. In the subsequent decades the reputation of Athens improved and its role as the founder of democracy became more closely tied in the American imagination to their own system. But the reverence for men like Socrates and Plato also remained.
Of course more than 2,400 years after the fact (or slightly less than 2400 years when this book was written) we could separate the man and his politics, and rate his significant other contributions as one of the father’s of philosophy, independent of his personal politics. But as journalist, Stone brings Ancient Athens to life, deliberately holding events to the same standard as he would in the present day. It’s an approach to history which can sometimes miss the point, but here he makes the daily life, the values and the world of Athens more vivid, and in stark contrast to the abstractions discussed by its philosophers. It’s a refreshing view and an enjoyable read whatever your level of knowledge about Socrates or classical Greece generally.
I found a certain irony in that the author I.F. Stone remains an accused, but unproved, Soviet agent. If you are looking for a parallel of elite intellectuals enjoying the freedom of living in a democracy, criticizing its flaws but sympathizing with a far more tyrannous opponent (and one where the freedom to dissent they enjoy so much would never be allowed) – then you don’t have to look too hard at Athens/Sparta, and the USA/USSR. Of course though openly and stridently left-wing, perhaps Stone was never a Soviet agent, perhaps his passion for democracy and free speech would not allow such a contradictions, or perhaps he remained deluded about the evils of communism and believed it to still be some expression of democracy, or perhaps in some way this book was his own method of coming to terms with the contradictions in his own attitudes.